Is the Future of Web TV "Rotten?" - Steve Rosenbaum - MediaBizBlogger
You've heard all about the ways that television viewing is going to change in next few years, but meanwhile the act of making television is going through some pretty remarkable changes as well.
So, poking around the upper reaches of the cable dial the other night, I was interested to see just what the creative folks at Current were thinking when they titled a show "The Rotten Tomatoes" show.
Now, for those of you who don't know, Rotten Tomatoes is a web site that aggregates movie criticism and creates a score based on a wide array of well respected critics. The Tomato Meter has long been a reliable way to gauge the overall take on a film's popularity. And because it links back to the reviews, you can get more detail. It is a very good site, and a very popular tool for film buffs.
How would that translate to TV? The whole website-to-TV show genre is pretty sparsely populated, and not often successful. So, how did Current do it?
Well, to begin with, they didn't put the folks behind the website on TV. Good move. TV Talent is a special breed. Current found hosts Brett Erlich and Ellen Fox. They are surprisingly sardonic, witty and TV-ish. That's a good thing. Oh, but what about the web-karma that comes from the Rotten Tomatoes folks? Well, they grab that too - by using webcams (I think) and a whole ensemble of guest commentators who are pretty darn funny, and mean too.
Then there's the pace. It's zippy, jumps around, nails a few movie reviews, refers back to the Rotten Tomato meter to back up their overall raves or pans, and brings in a wide variety of voices (including viewer supplied and uploaded reviews).
This is spot on.
Use the breadth of the Internet's talent to staff the Greek chorus. Use the data that only the web can gather to crowd-source the reviews via the Tomato Meter, and put real TV talent in front of the camera (and a green screen) so that it feels like a TV show rather than a bunch of web clips strung together. Oh, and don't forget the writing. They've got a solid writing team - it seems - because the show's tone and vibe is edgy and consistent, which is hard to do.
Through ensemble reviews of "Watchmen," "Shuttle" and "12," they unveil the top five movies with numbers in the titles, and they'll try to learn history through film.
So, how do you see it? The show airs Thursday nights at 10:30 on Current. And you can see it on YouTube as well, though there's some sort of embargo period that keeps the fresh and topical stuff showing up in YouTube search with a "you can only watch this on Current" link. Hmm....
So clearly the folks at Current are still using the net as a content source (Rotten Tomatoes stats) and a video source (web cam reviews), but when it comes to distribution, they're still about TV and their website first, and the wider web second. Given the current state of advertising on the web, that makes sense.
Overall, if you're wondering how TV is going to look once all the new technology, handheld mini-cameras, and such are deployed, you should take a look at Rotten Tomatoes on Current, it's worth checking out.
Steven Rosenbaum is the CEO and Co-Founder of Magnify.net - a fast-growing video publishing platform that powers more than 50,000 web sites, media companies, and content entrepreneurs to aggregate and curate web video from a wide variety of web sources. Currently Magnify.net publishes over 50,000 channels of Curated-Consumer Video, and is working closely with a wide variety of media makers, communities, and publishers in evolving their content offerings to include content created by, sorted and reviewed by community members. Rosenbaum is a serial entrepreneur, Emmy Award winning documentary filmmaker, and well known innovator in the field of user-generated media production. Rosenbaum Directed and Executive Produced the critically acclaimed 7 Days In September, and his MTV Series Unfiltered is widely regarding as the first commercial use of Consumer Generated Video in US mass media. Steve can be contacted at steve@magnify.net
